1 Cor. ii. 4, 5. My speech and viy preaching teas not ivith en- ticing icords of mans u'isdom, hut in demoyistration of the Spirit and of power : that your faith should not stand iji the wisdom of men, hut in the poiver of God.
IN the education of persons for the mmistry, it is justly thought that all possible attention should be paid to the attainment of whatever may render them eminent in their profession, and useful in the Church of God. Yet it may well be doubted whether a proper distinction be made between the acquisition of know- ledge and the use of it. A man cannot acquire too much ; but he may use his knowledge unprofitably, and even injuriously, in the discharge of his holy calling. There is, in the truths which he has to deliver, a dignity, which would be obscured by the artificial ornaments of human oratory. Hence St. Paul, even when at Corinth, where human eloquence
was in high request, forbore to comply with the pre- vaihng taste, lest, by yielding to it, " he should make the cross of Christ of none effect ^" Nor did he apologize for this departure from their established usages : on the contrary, he vindicates it, and assigns what they could not but acknowledge to be an abun- dantly sufficient reason for his conduct.
That we may not lose the benefit of his example, I will enter more particularly into the consideration of it ; and shew,
I. How St. Paul conducted himself in his pastoral office —
It is evident that he here contrasts his own con- duct with that of their most celebrated instructors, whom they were wont to admire. The philosophers, whom they had followed, were fond of displaying the profoundness of their own wisdom, and the extent of their own researches : and they were admired in pro- portion as they were able to maintain their theories with logical subtlety and plausible argumentation. Their great orators, too, to whom they had been wont to listen with delight, had filled their discourses with all the flowers of rhetoric, that, by pleasing the imagination of their hearers, they might suspend the severer exercises of judgment, and persuade beyond the just impulse of deliberate conviction. But to none of these artifices would the Apostle condescend.
He conducted his ministrations with the utmost simplicity —
[He was himself a man of great talent : having been edu- cated under the most celebrated teacher, and made a pro- ficiency in knowledge beyond most of his fellow-students ; so that, if he had judged it expedient, he could have moved with celebrity in the path which the most distinguished philoso- phers had trod. But he disdained to seek his own glory in the discharge of hrs sacred office : he therefore would have nothing to do with " the enticing words of man's wisdom." He had received a message, which he was anxious to deliver ; and, in delivering it, " he used great plainness of speech." He
a I Cor. i. 17.